Confessions from a Holiday Camp

by Timothy Lea

She does go on, doesn’t she?

  “Well, it’s difficult, isn’t it?” I say. “Do you fancy a cup of tea or something? It must get a bit knackering wandering about the streets all day.”

  “Thank you, no,” she says. “Look—” and she dives into a large satchel-type handbag she is carrying, “—this is the kind of thing I’m talking about.”

  She produces three aerosol canisters and lays them on the settee. One pink, one black, one green.

  “Oh yes,” I say, trying to keep my enthusiasm within bounds. Actually I am quite glad that we have found something to play with. I always reckon that it is easier to get to grips with a bird if you have something to keep your hands occupied. Start with your stamp collection and you will soon be showing her your tool set is one of my golden mottoes.

  “How does it work?” I say, wrapping my mits round one of the canisters. “Oh dear—”. This latter remark is prompted by the fact that I have depressed the plunger and ejected a large blob of frothy, white liquid over my visitor’s skirt. If standing in the dock of the Old Bailey I would probably say it was an accident.

  Faced with this emergency I move swiftly and muttering profuse apologies ram my hand up Miss Shapley-Thighs’ skirt. This manoeuvre, though liable to misinterpretation, is of course intended to prevent the gunge soaking through to the tights whilst also affording me a firm and uncontroversial surface on which to perform mopping up operations.

  “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” squeals my visitor.

  “I’m trying to stop your skirt getting stained,” I bleat. “You’d better take it off.”

  “Take it off?!”

  “Yes. I’ll get some water from the kitchen. I’m terribly sorry. I’ll buy you a new one if it’s ruined.” This show of efficient concern is obviously reassuring because when I return with a beaker of warm water she is standing behind the sofa with her skirt over her arm. She has fantastic legs that go straight up to her armpits and her arse would trigger off a wop’s pinching fingers like a burglar alarm. My hands are shaking as I put down the beaker and it is all I can do to control myself.

  “You have a marvellous figure,” I tell her breathlessly. “I hope you don’t mind me saying that?” No woman ever has and I can see that my boyish enthusiasm is not entirely repulsive to her.

  “Thank you,” she says permitting herself a slight smile. “I bet you say that to all the girls you squirt aerosols over.”

  She bends forward and starts rubbing away at her skirt and again I have to put a hammer lock on my impulses.

  “Let’s have a drink while you’re doing that,” I say. “What do you fancy? Gin, whisky, sherry?”

  In fact, I know the sideboard contains a half-bottle of Stone’s Ginger Wine and an empty Chianti bottle Rosie was going to make a lamp out of seven years ago, but I want this to come as a complete surprise.

  “No thanks,” she says. “I’ve finished. Now, where can I put it to dry?”

  I whip the skirt down to the kitchen and drape it over the stove and when I get back the lovely girl is curled up in an armchair with her questionnaire over her thatch patch.

  “Back to the questions is it?” I observe. “My, but you take your work seriously, don’t you?”

  “It’s my first job,” she says. “OH!”

  I follow her eyes and see that one of the poxy aerosols has started leaking all over the settee. Mum will half kill me and for the first time since I peeped through the lace curtains, all thoughts of bayonet practice are banished from my mind. Snatching up the damp rag I dive onto my hands and knees and start rubbing away like a maniac. So wrapped up in my task am I that I do not immediately notice that Miss Research is doing her bit beside me. It is only when I accidentally bounce against her boobs that it occurs to me that Mum doing her nut is not the only thing I could be up against. The damp patch is half across the sofa, the questionnaires are strewn all over the floor and the aerosols have rolled under the sideboard.

  “It’s not our lucky day, is it?” I say into her mouth which is a couple of inches from mine. I smile and she smiles and her eyes make a quick trip round the features that litter my face.

  “Um,” I murmur, which is a handy excuse for conversation at moments like this. “Let’s forget it.” I slip my lips into forward gear and accelerate swiftly onto her mouth. This feature is so meltingly tender that on impact my toes glow like brake lights and I feel small ripples of excitement breaking up and darting away down the long corridors of my body like kids coming out of class. I slip my hands up underneath her blouse and gently mould her back until my fingers are flicking to and fro across the catch of her bra. Her mouth is still against mine and showing no indications of finding the position unpleasant so I carefully release the catch and feel her breasts swell forward gratefully. To my surprise, she begins to tug the hair at the back of my neck and squirm against the thick bars of muscle which decorate my chest. By a happy accident a pillow drops to the floor and it is down on to this that I gently press her, running my right hand over the smooth sheen of her tights until I can feel her minge fringe stirring beneath my fingers like the fur of an animal. Her lips are half parted and her eyes closed. Glancing away from them I see that “Wife-Swapping – Danish Style” has suddenly emerged from its hiding place behind the cushion and that Inga and Horst are revealed in a manner calculated to win a warm glint of approval from any manufacturer of chocolate bars. This glimpse of our Scandinavian chums at play is sufficient to give the market garden down the front of my jeans a decidedly tropical flavour and I start peeling her tights off like there is an Olympic Gold Medal for it. It is at moments like this that I wish I could press a release mechanism and feel my jeans zooming into space like ejected pilots.

  She pulls me down towards her and we wrestle with each other’s clothing whilst trading mouths and gasping and gurgling like we are drowning in lust and going down for the last time. She helps tug my jeans over my heels and we ruckle against each other so that I can feel the buttons of her open blouse biting into my chest. By now you could paint my old man green and call it a cucumber and her greedy little fingers have hardly settled on it before I am checking on the best place to tuck it away. Luckily I am no stranger to the area and soon find the ideal spot. Warm like a pot of cha brewing under a silk cosy it is, and I have to bite my lips and think of hob-nailed boots to control myself.

  “Go on! Go on!” she bleats and it is going to take a battalion of Gurkhas to stop me. Rising up in the litter of questionnaires and pausing only to tuck Inga and Horst discreetly down the side of the settee, I launch myself into her like a nuclear sub gliding down a narrow slipway. Her hands close around my backside like she is frightened it might suddenly drop off and we start beating out the theme from Ravel’s Bolero in a way that would bring tears to the composer’s eyes. Powerful stuff it is, too, and once into our stride we are not easily disturbed.

  This is something I realise when I hear Mum’s voice from the hall.

  “I can smell burning,” she says.

  Now we have been going at it a bit – but burning? I don’t think so. Not that I would be prepared to argue with her because at that moment I am riding a tidal wave of passion and would not be diverted from my purpose if the Dagenham Girl Pipers started marching around the room. My friend obviously feels the same because she is carving finger holds in my shoulder blades and making a noise like a donkey with hiccups. A few mighty thrusts and the deed is done with a mutual shriek of ecstasy that must rupture eardrums as far away as Balham High Road.

  Mum certainly hears it because I look up to see her peering down on us with a face turning the colour of a baboon’s bum. As is always the case with me, I now begin to wonder what I was getting so worked up about and my passion evaporates like spit on a stove-top. Not so with Mum.

  “Timmy!” she screams. “Oh no! How could you? It’s horrible! Oh no! Oh no! no! no!” I have never known her behave like this before and it is really quite disturbing. We uncouple and I scramble to my feet just
in time to give Mrs. Wagstaff a glimpse of the full frontals which obviously takes her back a bit – about forty years I should think. Mrs. Wagstaff is one of Mum’s friends and the biggest gossip and ratbag in the neighbourhood. The last person Mum would have chosen to witness our little domestic upheaval. She is carrying my friend’s skirt which is soaking wet – what is left of it, that is. A quick glance at the charred remains convince me that it was a bad idea to drape it over the oven to dry.

  ‘Ooh!!” says Mrs. Wagstaff. “OOoooh!”

  “My skirt!!” squeals Miss Aerosol. “It’s ruined; ruined!!”

  “How could you do this to me?” howls Mum. “How could you?!! On the sitting room carpet as well.”

  I don’t really see what that has to do with it but I don’t argue the point. After all, one doesn’t want to upset one’s own mother too much, does one?

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was as a direct result of this little incident that I found myself pacing up and down in the reception of Funfrall Enterprises a few days later. Mum has been decidedly stroppy about my little flirtation on the hearth rug and has passed the ill tidings on to Dad who has reacted in characteristic fashion and done his nut. Like all dyed in the wool dirty old men, Dad has a deep-rooted objection to anyone else but himself getting their end away, and is very quick to come an attack of the total outrage.

  It is perhaps a trifle unfortunate that he discovered me breaking down racial barriers with one, Matilda NGobla, on that self-same rug a few months before. She was one of our next door neighbours and never a favourite with my parents who are so bigoted they drape a blanket over the tele during the Black and White Minstrel Show. Anyway it has now got to the stage where Mum and Dad start going over the seat covers with a vacuum cleaner before they sit down and I have clearly got to head for the wide open spaces again.

  I don’t fancy volunteering to become callus fodder down at the Labour Exchange so, bearing in mind what Mum has said about Sidney wringing gravy out of his turn-ups, I pad round to get the gen from sister Rosie. I am fortunate enough to find her between the slimming salon and the hairdresser’s and a glance round the eye-level grills and the louvred cupboard tells me that Mum has not exaggerated. Sidney must be on to a good thing. Rosie fills in the plot by telling me how Sidney sold the window cleaning business for a ridiculous sum of money and moved into Funfrall on the strength of a contact – Sidney has contacts like dogs have fleas. It is painful to listen to and I am quick to down my cup of Blend 37 and leave Rosie to wrestle with her Boeuf Strogonoff.

  The reception area of Funfrall Enterprises is like an ice rink which may have something to do with the personality of the receptionist who would turn a cupboard into a refrigerator by sitting in it. She is like one of those frigid bints you see photographed in opticians’ windows, and watches me as if she reckons I am going to start nicking the magazines. With a choice of “The Director” or “The Investors’ Chronicle” she must be joking. Her makeup looks as if it has been put on with a spray gun and it can hardly withstand the strain of her telling me that Mr. Noggett’s secretary will be waiting for me by the lift on the fifth floor.

  This girl is easy to recognise because she is breathing heavily and there is a large red flush on one side of her neck. I look at this pointedly and watch her tucking in her blouse as I follow her tight little arse down the corridor. It looks as if Sidney hasn’t changed much.

  The man himself is staring out of the window with his back to me when I come into his office and I notice that on his desk there is a photograph of Rosie clasping the infant Jason to her bosom. There is also a strong whiff of perfume, aftershave lotion and togetherness, but perhaps I am imagining it.

  “It suits you,” I say when Sidney turns round.

  “What? Oh, you mean this?” He fingers his moustache as if he hadn’t realised what I was talking about. “Rosie nagged me into growing it.”

  He is looking well, there is no doubt about it. A bit plumper round the chops but still a fine figure of a conman in his Burton Executive suit. I wonder if I am actually turning green.

  “So you’re back again,” he says. “Decided that being a driving instructor wasn’t quite your line?” I nod. “I don’t know how many jobs you expect me to find you before you settle down.” When he says that I wish I hadn’t come, but I keep my mouth shut.

  “Still, you’ve got to make allowances for your brother-in-law, haven’t you?”

  “That’s what I always say about you.” I mean, there is a limit, isn’t there?

  “Saucy, saucy.” Sid wags his finger at me.

  “Don’t bite the hand that lays the golden egg.”

  The news that Sidney had problems with his Eleven Plus will surprise nobody.

  “Look, Sid,” I say. “I don’t want to grovel. Have you got anything that might be up my street?”

  ‘Well, I don’t know. It all depends.” Sidney fiddles with his cigarette case. “You know I’m Promotions Manager for our holiday camp circuit?”

  “Mum said something about it.”

  “Yes, well amongst other things, that means I have to recruit our Holiday Hosts.”

  “You mean Redcoats?”

  Sidney’s face turns white and he darts a glance around the room as if he expects Fu Manchu to leap out of the air conditioning.

  “Don’t mention those words,” he hisses. “There is no other Holiday Host than a Funfrall holiday Host. We do not recognise the existence of any competition.”

  He sounds as if he is reading the words off a fiery tablet and I don’t mean the kind you take for tummy upsets.

  “O.K. O.K.” I say. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist. I was only asking. What the the chances of me becoming a—a Holiday Host?”

  Sidney leans back in his swivel chair and puts his finger tips together in a gesture he must have borrowed from “The Power Game”.

  “It depends,” he says. “Do you play any musical instruments?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”

  “Can you do conjuring tricks?’

  “No.”

  “Are you of instructor standard at any popular recreational activities?”

  “Well—I—er—”

  “I didn’t mean that! What about children. Do you like children?”

  “I like little Jason,” I lisp untruthfully.

  “That’s why he bursts into tears every time he sees you, I suppose?”

  “I think he’s a bit highly strung,” I murmur, thinking that about six feet off the ground would be favourite.

  “What about dancing. Tap or Modern Ballroom?”

  “You know I don’t go for that kind of thing.” Rape, arson, murder, yes. But ballroom dancing? Do me a favour!

  “And women. How do you reckon you would get on with our lady visitors?”

  “Birds? Now you’re talking, Sid. All those love-lorn little darlings looking for a bit of slap and tickle. I’ll be in there like a vat of Enos. You know me Sid—I’ll—”

  “Forget it!” Sidney bashes his hand down on his paper knife and bites back the pain.

  “As a Holiday Host for Funfrall Enterprises, you would be the repository of a sacred trust. Your role is that of a happy holiday guide, counsellor and friend – not some sex-mad raver trying to shove his nasty up every bint on the camp.”

  “Beautifully put, Sid,” I observe. “At least, the first part was. Straight out of the text book. But, how can you say it. I mean you of all people! Do you remember Liz and the toolshed. How you—”

  “Yes, yes,” he gabbled, rising to his feet, “but things have changed since then. You’ve got to develop a sense of responsibility in this business, I’ve got a position to think of.”

  “Quite a few of them, if I remember rightly,” I observe, “and by the way, your flies are undone.”

  You don’t often see Sidney lost for words but his mouth gapes open like a serving hatch and he strikes sparks as he yanks his zip up.

  “I bet she leaves the cover off her
typewriter, too,” I say. For a second I think he is going to belt me but then he relaxes and the veins go underground again.

  “Sit down and shut up,” he says. “Go on, sit down. I want to talk to you. Look, Timmy. I’m going to be honest with you.”

  When Sidney says that, strong men start checking their wallets. “If it wasn’t for Rosie, I wouldn’t give you a job cleaning up after an elephant act. But I know that if I don’t, she’ll nag the bleeding arse off me.”

  “Thank you, Sid,” I say, interpreting the way things are going.

  “Don’t thank me. I’m only doing it because I like sleeping at night. And let me make it quite clear. You cock this one up, and Rosie or no Rosie, I’ll flog your balls to a driving range. Are you with me?”

  “Yes, Sidney. How do you see me fitting in?”

  Sidney snorts and fiddles in one of his drawers. “Don’t tempt me. I’ve got a job here for a Host at Melody Bay. The last one—oh, it doesn’t matter what happened to the last one.”

  “Melody Bay? I’ve never heard of it.”

  Sidney goes over to a wall map of the British Isles and jabs his finger at it.

  “I didn’t know they had seaside up there.”

  Sidney jabs again.

  “This blue bit is sea and it stretches all round the country. That’s why we’re an island.”

  “I knew that, Sidney. It’s just that I never—oh well, it doesn’t matter. What do I have to do?”

  “I’ll give you a book about that and they’ll tell you when you get there. It’s what you don’t do that I’m interested in.”

  “Yes, Sidney.”

  “Lay off the campers. If you’re caught on the job with a guest, you’re out of one. Got it?”

  “Yes, Sidney.”

  “It isn’t always easy. By gawd it isn’t.”

  Sidney gazes ceilingwards like a man who has had to withstand terrible temptations in his time.

  “If you must indulge choose a Funfrall employee.”

  “Like your secretary, Sid?”

  Sidney momentarily closes his eyes as he controls himself.